Bill McCarthy wrote:
>
> The Aarne-Thompson Index to folktales lists cumulative tales of this sort
> under numbers 2009-2075. These many many versions and variants are all
> similar to the goat song and to The Old Woman and Her Pig (AT 2030, the one
> that seems to be in question here). The House That Jack Built is the most
> common English-language piece after The Old Woman and her Pig, though The
> Tree in the Hole and the Hole in the Woods (etc.) is also fairly
> common. 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall is built on a principle of
> composition that is a bit different. It fits more with the formula tales
> that Thompson places after 2075). Some of these "tales" are songs, at
> least in some language traditions, some are recitations, and some are
> straight prose, though rather repetitive prose. I have never encountered
> The Old Woman and her Pig as anything but a prose tale, but there is no
> reason why it couldn't also exist as a song or at least as a chant, as
> apparently it does.
>
> I have always been rather fond of the genre, but my kids always rebelled
> when I told them.
The common English (American, anyway) song in this genre which comes to
mind is "The Old Woman Who Swallowed the Fly".
-Don Duncan
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